Ready to format long Instagram captions that have your audience hanging on your every word?
Have you ever wondered how coaches & creators write mile-long Instagram captions that have their audience hanging on their every word AND sticking around to comment on their posts?!
I’m going to break it all down for you in this blog post!
Have valuable insight that you want to share with your audience on Instagram? Worried they might not read your entire caption?
You’ll find my top formatting tips for long Instagram captions right here!
Captions packed with valuable information for Instagram feed posts tend to run a bit on the longer. So gaining reader retention is CRITICAL for your message being HEARD.
The longer your reader sticks around, the more invested they are with your brand, the more they want to hear!
Using high-value long captions on Instagram is another way of building your brand’s know, like, and trust factor.
Your audience needs to be invested with your message in order to warm them up into taking the next step.
Next steps are where the fun comes in, opting in or making a purchase!
Here are 4 easy ways to format your long captions on Instagram to retain your reader!
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1) Edit Your Long Format Captions
Dump your caption in your preferred location (planning app, notes, Google Doc, etc) Then READ IT OUT LOUD.
PS: planning your Instagram captions from a laptop or desktop? Install the Grammarly plugin to catch any spelling or punctuation errors.
When you read your caption out loud, does it come across the same it sounded ‘in your head’?
More importantly, does it come across the same way that it would if you were having a conversation in a coffee shop with a friend or even a potential client?
You want to be sure that your writing voice (jargon and all!) remain true to you. This sets an expectation with your audience of what it’s like to speak with you, hang out with you, and more importantly what it would be like to work with you!
Next up under editing: removing any unnecessary words!
Remember, you are writing an Instagram post and not a blog post so you don’t get any SEO points for maxing out on the character count.
When I begin removing unnecessary words in my long format Instagram captions, “and” is usually the first to go for me!
You might find other ‘crutch’ words in your own writing (this is the written equivalent of the verbal use of the word ‘um’ repeatedly) that can easily be removed while still conveying your high-value message.
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2) Make Your Long Format Captions ‘Digestible’
How often are we inundated with content?
Overconsumption of content coupled with decision fatigue is enough to make any sane person scroll Instagram without realizing they are scrolled right past the exact thing they were on the lookout for.
I like to call this one the virtual equivalent of missing your exit while you are driving because you were lost in thought!
You have to capture the fatigued eye with your formatting, and an important way of doing this is making damn good sure that your captions are easily digestible!
Breaking everything down to make it as reader-friendly as possible is key for digestible Instagram captions.
Here are your new best friends:
- Lists
- Bullets
- Numbers
- Blank Line Spacing
- Emojis
- Capital Letters
Now put them on your payroll so they can get to work!
Breaking out each sentence with an invisible line bracket makes your caption easy to scan and ‘less threatening’ to the average reader than a huge run-on paragraph chunk of text, which is usually met with an ‘I don’t have time for all that’ mentality.
Presenting your information in a numbered pattern or a bulleted list allows your reader to come in grab exactly what they came for! This also piques the interest of your reader further and guides them into reading the rest of your post (funny how that works isn’t it?!)
Emoji’s are oftentimes thought of as ‘adding in the fun factor’, but don’t overlook the fact that they can do their work in conveying your READERS emotions!
Conveying your reader’s emotions is critical if your speaking point is addressing them directly!
Maybe you are discussing the frustration or confusion that your audience has about a particular product or service; emojis are a great way to touch on that and connect your audience further with your message.
3) Use Instagram Fonts in Your Long Format Captions
A quick Google search will yield endless results for Instagram fonts.
These online tools allow you to type in a portion of your caption and have it transformed into a slew of different fonts that can be copied and pasted into your Instagram caption.
Bonus! You can use this neat little hack for your Instagram bio too!
These fonts are amazing to draw your reader’s eye into accentuated words, specific catchphrases, or event shared quotes!
My personal tip, use them sparingly within your caption. Too much of a good thing will have your message lost in a sea of scripty fonts.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
4) Move Your Calls To Action Around
Fighting the flow when it comes to formatting your calls to action in your long Instagram captions?
Calls to action do not have to live and die at the very end of your Instagram captions.
You can use calls to action to pique the interest of your reader and draw them deeper into your caption by using them at the beginning (gasp!)
Asking your reader a question that relates to the remainder of your post gets their wheels churning about your speaking point.
Or, insert a big fat boldfaced question right in the middle of your caption that relates to their pain point!
You’ve already drawn them into your post now you are highlighting a specific question that relates to their struggle!
Bonus points if you use one of the above tips to accentuate the question
And yes, you can still use calls to action at the end of your post!
Readers that have consumed all of your content are primed for the picking!! They need to be guided into taking the next step!
Ready to up-level your Instagram Engagement?
Check out >> The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Engagement! <<
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